Lordship of New Spain

The Lordship of New Spain (1527-1539) was a colony of the Spanish Empire that was founded in 1527 when King Charles I of Spain conferred the title of "Lord" upon Diego Velazquez. He sent 5,000 florins to assist the Spanish war effort in the Americas and made New Spain a larger colony. It was replaced by the Viscounty of New Spain in 1539 after the Spanish captured Cuahtemoc.

Background
In 1515, King Ferdinand II of Aragon sent the eager conquistador Diego Velazquez de Cuellar to establish a colony in the New World from which the Spanish could explore the rest of the continent. He founded the city of Havana that year, and proceeded to send fellow conquistador Hernan Cortes on an expedition to Mexico in 1521. Cortes was sent with a party of Spanish troops, two priests, and two traders to explore the new continent, so he founded the city of Vera Cruz on the coast and proceeded to find out about the local inhabitants; the nearby civilizations were the strong Aztec Empire and the brave Tlaxcalans. In 1522, Cortes seized the city of Tehuacan from the Aztecs and formed an alliance with the Tlaxcalans, and this alliance aided him in his conquest of much of Mexico. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, fell in 1526 and it was renamed "Mexico" after the nearby Mexica tribe. Mexico became the new capital of the New Spain colony, replacing Havana. With Mexico in his hands, Cortes became the effective ruler of New Spain, as Velazquez was no longer the governor of the capital of New Spain. A year later, King Charles I elevated the status of Cortes to "Lord" and sent 5,000 florins to assist in the war effort.

History of the Lordship
Cortes launched a series of campaigns against the Indians with aid from the Tlaxcalans and Tarascans, and Diego Velazquez sent his son Pedro Velazquez with an expedition of troops to assist him. More and more Spanish troops arrived in the New World and conquered all of the lands from Honduras near the southern tip of Central America up to northern Mexico (south of Zacatecas and Jalisco provinces). In 1538, shortly after Cortes conquered the northern coastal city of Cuahtemoc, the lordship was elevated by King Charles I to the Viscounty of New Spain, upgrading it.